The Journal: Ash Fall (26 page)

“What about our garden, Nahna?” Emilee asked,
with a touch of anger.

“We’re going to dig up as much as we can and
put it in the greenhouse. Maybe we can save some of it,” I told
her. “We have to work as fast as we can. There’s so much to
do.”

I moved closer to the phone. “Tom, it might
be good for you to stock as much food and water as you can and stay
home with your wife and son.”

Tom was slow to respond. “They…they both died
in that last round of flu, so I guess I’ll stay here,” he said in a
soft monotone.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Tom, I didn’t know.” My
heart ached for my friend. “You should still gather as much as you
can, Tom, the city will need your guidance.” With that, he
disconnected.

My family sat in stunned silence. I don’t
know what was going through their minds, I just knew that mine was
in chaos.

“Okay, here is our first plan of action. We
need all of the vehicles filled with gas; Eric has already started
on that. We need to dig up as many plants from the garden as we can
and get them into the greenhouse. We use pots, buckets, anything,
just get them indoors.” I thought hard, my mind racing. “Jason,
there is more chicken wire out behind the garden. Will you close in
under the grow boxes? We need to move the chickens too, plus their
barrels of feed.”

“Okay. What else, Mom?” Jason asked.

“Amanda, you three need to move back across
the street. I think we have to circle the wagons,” I laughed
nervously. “Besides, the food is here, and once the cloud hits,
there will be no moving about. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
She nodded. I know that neither of them was anxious to leave their
house yet again.

“I think that’s enough for tonight. If any of
you have any concerns about something, please speak up and share. I
think between all of us we just might come up with a solution.”

“I think I can handle filling the cars, Mom,”
Amanda said. “I can pack the stuff we’ll need when we get home
tonight.”

“I’ve already done Mom’s car and the truck,
so it’s just your car and Mom’s old car and the gas cans,” Eric
said, handing her the cash pouch.

When Eric mentioned the gas cans, those empty
drums in the barn burned in my vision. “Oh, I wonder if we have
time to fill those drums!” I exclaimed in frustration.

Jason and John exchanged a quick look.

“Ah, Mom,” Jason said, “they’re full. John
and I filled them when you and Eric were shopping the other day. We
wanted to surprise you, but I think you should know now so you
don’t have to worry about that.”

I spun around to look at John.

“But you said I could,” he pleaded.

“Yes, I did, and thank you,” I hugged him
fiercely.

The rest of us started digging up the
delicate plants in the garden as soon as Amanda left, taking Jacob
with her for the ride. With the first batch of tomatoes and beans,
I stayed in the greenhouse, quickly replanting what I could into
the grow boxes to make more floor space for whatever else they
brought in. They brought in pepper plants and cabbage, kale and
chard. The root crops like beets and potatoes couldn’t be moved. I
would have to start over with those.

It was dark by the time we were done digging
and moving, and Amanda had filled their car and my old car.

“I’ll do the cages tomorrow, Mom,” Jason
said, “I need some of my tools to make things go quicker.”

“Get some rest, everyone, and thank you,” I
said as my family started to leave. “I’ll see you all at the
township building at nine o’clock sharp!”

“Why do we have to watch the video, Mom?”
Jason asked.

“Because you need to see what everyone else
will, to understand the importance of what we’re doing and what’s
possibly going to happen. Before you say you can watch it later, I
also need you there to help me answer questions, okay?” Jason
nodded, and he and Amanda took Jacob home.

I slumped in the wooden kitchen chair,
exhausted. John came up from behind, set a glass in front of me. I
tasted the amber liquid that slid around the ice cubes: the reserve
stock of my spiced rum. It glided down my throat and I sighed as
John started rubbing my shoulders.

“Do you really think this cloud will reach us
and that all this we’re doing is necessary, Allex?” he asked,
digging his thumbs into my tight neck muscles.

“I’m hoping with all my heart that all this
frantic work is for nothing, John, and that the ash cloud passes us
by. What if it doesn’t go south of us? What if it goes even more
north and puts us in the center of it? We just can’t take the risk
of being caught unprepared. Our very lives may depend on what we do
in the next few days.” I closed my eyes to the weary tears I felt
building.

“Let’s see if we can catch some news. Maybe
it will give us a better idea of what to expect,” John
suggested.

The footage that was being shown started
clear and ended with heavy static and a blurry picture. After the
first quake this morning, the park was evacuated of the few
visitors. The second quake prompted the staff to make a hasty exit.
For some of them it was too late. They did provide enough
information to explain what had happened.

“I’m standing about a mile from Yellowstone
Lake, up on the rise near Park Point,” the disembodied voice
stated. A park ranger was using his phone camera to show the
panorama. The multi-acre lake shimmered and sloshed just as the
second quake hit and the camera jiggled when the ranger lost his
footing. Once steady again, the picture cleared and the ranger
resumed speaking. “Holy, shit!” he exclaimed. “The lake is… it’s
disappearing! Let’s get out of here!”

A very tired looking young woman came on the
screen. Simone Johnston, a geologist specializing in seismology
according to the banner on the bottom of the screen, moved a few
papers on her desk before looking up.

“From what we’ve been able to piece together,
from the readings that come into our office automatically and this
video you just watched from the brave but foolish park ranger, the
second quake, a 9.7 on the Richter Scale, opened a massive fissure
here,” she said, pointing to a chart, “and in a matter of seconds,
that fissure emptied billions of gallons of water down into the
molten lava, creating an explosion that went beyond our
instruments. What it did, in short, was to waken this simmering
subterranean volcano.” She looked right at the camera and said,
“It’s no longer subterranean. We now have an active, make that a
very active, thirty-mile wide volcano that continues to grow and
spew lava at an alarming rate. With each belch, it builds the
volcanic height, giving the smoke and ash it produces longer
range.” With that, the picture cut back to the newsroom.

John turned the TV off. “Let’s go to bed.
It’s going to be a very long day tomorrow.”

* * *

I left John sleeping and went back to the
greenhouse to plant more seedlings into the grow boxes. There were
only so many pots I’d saved over the years and those needed to be
reserved for the plants that would have to stay in them, like the
corn! I had to remember to dig that up tomorrow.

Several small pots held the delicate sprouts
of the purple pod pole bean. At first I wasn’t sure what to do with
them, we couldn’t do trellises in the shallow boxes. I decided to
move them out of the containers and into one of the many hanging
pots; if they couldn’t climb up then they’d have to climb down.

Two hours later I slid into bed, completely
exhausted, and fell instantly into a deep, troubled sleep.

CHAPTER 27

July 18

I slipped the old VCR tape into the player
and hit pause. The room was full, but it wasn’t standing room only.
There just weren’t that many of us left. I wasn’t sure if that was
good or bad anymore.

“I’m glad so many of you could be here this
morning,” Anna stated solemnly as the room quieted down. “As I
understand it, time is short right now, so I’m turning this over to
Allexa Smeth.” With that she moved to the back and leaned against
the wall.

“I’m sure by now everyone has heard that
there were several earthquakes in Yellowstone Park yesterday,” I
began. “While that in itself isn’t unusual, the magnitude of those
quakes is, and what has resulted is what has our attention today. I
know everyone has heard about the caldera that is below
Yellowstone: heated rock and lava. It has been that way for
millions of years and we’ve been told that it could stay just like
that for a million more.” I looked at the crowd; my friends, my
family, they were all watching me with grave faces. I was inwardly
pleased to see Pastor Carolyn and Dr. Mark. They would both be
needed in the coming days and weeks and they need to be fully
informed.

“Late yesterday, one of the stronger quakes
ripped open the bottom of the Yellowstone Lake, the largest lake in
the park,” I looked down at my notes, “in the southeast corner of
the park that had a depth ranging from one hundred forty feet to
almost four hundred feet. That’s a lot of water and that rip dumped
billions and billions of gallons of icy forty-one degree water into
the smoldering lava, which created an explosion of steam that sent
a hundred million tons of pumice, rock and ash a hundred thousand
feet straight up. In turn, that opened the caldera even wider. It
was an explosion equal to one thousand Hiroshima bombs.

“The report I got this morning states that
there is now a mega-volcano that is at least thirty miles wide,
continuously spewing lava and ash and it’s still growing. The
caldera is estimated to be thirty-seven miles long, eighteen miles
wide and seven miles deep. That’s just an estimate. It took only
twenty minutes, and there is now nothing left within a one hundred
mile radius of the initial site, and that keeps expanding as more
and more pockets erupt.”

“Just twenty minutes? How?” Lenny asked.

“It’s called a pyroclastic cloud, Lenny,” I
answered. “Super-heated gas moving at almost five hundred miles per
hour sucked out all the oxygen and replaced it with ungodly heat
and gases miles in front of the actual cloud. Everything living
died instantly: plants, animals, and people, all gone.

“I have a fictionalized docudrama on what
might happen in such an event. It’s only about forty-five minutes
long. I first want to say, this is probably the most serious single
thing that we have faced as a community. An eruption of this
magnitude puts tons of steam, hydrogen chloride, hydrogen fluoride,
sulfur dioxide and pulverized rock and pumice, ten to twenty miles
up into the air, and then it comes down. It comes down as acid
rain, dust, and those pulverized fine shards of rock falling that
look like ash will be like breathing glass.”

I hit play.

* * *

When the short movie ended, the room erupted
into a buzz of murmuring voices.

“What does this mean to us, Allexa?” someone
asked from the back of the room.

“The ash cloud is coming this way,” I said
flatly. “This cloud is huge and it’s getting bigger all the time as
more eruptions happen. It will take four days to hit New York and
it will be east of the Mississippi and here in less than
forty-eight hours if the winds stay as they are. The Jet Stream is
being affected because of the height of the heated cloud, so it
keeps moving and the forecasters are having trouble projecting the
path. Too much of a shift, and those forty-eight hours could become
twenty-four. That’s why time is of the essence. We just don’t know
when it will arrive.”

“So what do we do?”

“I think it best for everyone to stay
together. It will be easier to secure one or two places than ten.
The hotel would be ideal. There are a dozen rooms for sleeping,
multiple bathrooms, and space to find some privacy, too.” I caught
the pastor’s attention. “Pastor Carolyn, if the Stone Soup
facilities could be moved into the hotel kitchens that would help a
great deal.” She nodded.

“All of those working on Bradley’s Backyard
garden should dig up your plants and get them indoors. Put them in
pots, buckets, anything to bring them out of the ash and to keep
them alive. They just might live long enough to feed you.

“Animals need to come in, too,” I made eye
contact with Joshua. “If you’ve got pets, or chickens, sheep,
goats, any animal will die if left outside when this cloud hits.
The key will be to not breathe this ash, and for most that will
mean not going outside, not even opening windows. If there is a
reason to be out, wear a mask.” I reached to my left and set a box
on the table. “There are fifty surgical masks in here. I want
everyone to take one and another one for someone you know isn’t
here.”

“Is anything else going to happen?” Amanda
asked, her face furrowed in a deep frown.

“The sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid in the
upper atmosphere will start to reflect the sun’s radiation and at
the same time it will absorb the heat radiated by the Earth, so our
temperatures will start to cool. Since the temperature might drop
twenty degrees or more, we might even break our own records and
have snow in August.” I smiled, but few found it funny.

“How long will we have to stay inside?” Anna
asked.

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “It
could be a week or two weeks or two months. I just can’t answer
that, Anna. This won’t affect just us. That cloud will circle the
globe, maybe for years.”

* * *

“How is it you have boxes of surgical masks,
Allexa?” Mark asked as everyone was leaving.

“Because I’m paranoid, Mark,” I said
flippantly and with a shrug. Then I got serious. “Please be
careful. We’re going to need you.”

* * *

“What do we need to do now, Mom?” Jason
asked, pacing in my kitchen.